Monday, April 25, 2011

Imagine What They Could Do With a Fly Rod!

Orangutans living in Borneo scavenge fish that wash up along the shore and scoop catfish out of small ponds for fresh meals, anthropologist Anne Russon of York University in Toronto reported on April 14 at a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Over two years, Russon saw several animals on these forested islands learn on their own to jab at catfish with sticks, so that the panicked prey would flop out of ponds and into a red ape’s waiting hands.

“If orangutans can do this, then early hominids could also have practiced tool-assisted fishing,” Russon said.

Other early hominids? Hmm. let me see...

Maybe they need some Orangutans to help show them how...

Observations of fishing by orangutans raise the likelihood that hominids ate meat, including fish, before the emergence of the Homo genus around 2.5 million years ago (SN: 9/11/10, p. 8), said anthropologist David Braun of the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Anthropologists have traditionally held that meat-eating first assumed prominence among early Homo species and fueled brain expansion.

Orangutans would raise the intellectual level of some fishing message boards...